


The Bitterest Lily

by Niccolò Machiavelli (Piccolo_Machiavelli)



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, 16th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Machiavelli - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9196709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piccolo_Machiavelli/pseuds/Niccol%C3%B2%20Machiavelli
Summary: 1527 is finally upon us.





	

A pair of gentle, airy hands wrap around her neck and clench her throat. The sun shines above, bleaching the fields with white and drenching the life out of everything its rays touch. And with it comes the musty air of June, the musty air that permeates every pore of her skin and dries her mouth. She raises a glass of water to her lips and winces as she swallows. There’s a thin layer of dust inside each cup, and she coughs harshly, tugging on the lock of hair that all-too-often dangles over her eye. Her husband, yes, her husband; that is why she is here. For the past two days, he has been bedridden. His miracle pills do not seem to be working, she realises, nothing seems to be working. She sheds a tear when she thinks about their golden days, but she wipes it away with a washcloth. It would be an insult to openly cry in front of someone barely alive or well.

He calls her name. His voice is raspy, barely audible, but she has trained herself to hear him from outside the house. She drags the whole bucket into his room, where he pitifully lies. He feebly twirls a pen in his fingers, although he cannot leave for his study to write. He can hardly sit up without an excruciating pain in his abdomen.

“Grazie, my wife,” he says, taking the cup from her. His hands tremble, and she holds the bottom of the cup, the expression on her face never changing. She once flew into a panic when he almost dropped a cup, and when he bent over to pick it up, he was forced upright with a piercing shriek. Learn from your mistakes, she has told herself, and don’t send a sick man into a panic ever again. “Do you happen to know what the date is, dear?”

“The twenty-first of June. Why? Do you have somewhere to be at this hour, in this condition?” She smiles shyly, and he dishearteningly wheezes, unable to produce his usual raucous laugh. He lights up a room, his colleagues had once said. Even though he is sick, he can always enjoy a good laugh.

“I do, in fact. Could you arrange for dear Francesco to take me to the Piazza della Signoria? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, as well as the better half of Florence, too. I doubt it would be that difficult to sneak into the city,” he suggests. His eyes are lit up again, aren’t they? He’s planning some scheme or another. 

“You’d have to get off of your bed, first. Besides, you’d have to fight off guards who all know your name and face, all without collapsing into a coughing heap on the ground,” she chides, rustling his hair and planting a kiss on his forehead.

“Oh, your words wound me!” he cries, coughing loudly and holding his abdomen. “Cazzo. How much longer do you think this is going to be?”  
“Your illness? Not too long. Us? Forever,” she answers, her grin widening. The air has become stagnant in the room. The sun is setting, enveloping her and her husband in the oblivion of half-darkness. “Forgive me, I’ll be but a moment. I’m going outside to clear my head.” Something is pushing her, but she does not know what. 

“Don’t take more than an hour!” he calls after her, coughing, as she leaves the room. The children are playing upstairs, undisturbed, their feet pounding the floor. She walks down the hallway, captivated for a moment by the open window, but she resists her desire to stand there and stare for a while. Swinging open the door, she steps outside. Her path leads her to the view north of the house, the view where she can see Firenze from seven miles out. From a distance, the city of splendour looks unchanged, with its torre and piazzi and the golden cross glimmering in the sunlight on top of Il Duomo. She cannot see it in this time of day, but she knows it is still there. 

And in the grass, there grows a lily. Its petals are in bloom, and she cannot resist plucking the strange flower to give to her ailing husband. She hurries back inside with darkness at her heels. 

“Husband?” she calls, twirling the green stalk in her hand. The white lily lies in the palm of her other hand, its silky petals brushing against her skin. “I have something for you.”

She is disturbed when she does not hear a response. He is gone, he must be. It is all too soon, she thinks, and she hopes the children are not around to witness any of it. She considers calling the children downstairs in case the time has come, but she decides against it when she hears no noise. They must already be with their father.

“Husband?” She enters the room, and all of her little children are the first to greet her. He is smiling up at her, too, but the words have already been stolen from him. “Oh, you had me worried sick! I was worried the time had come already.”

“The time? Time for what?” he croaks out, outstretching his feeble hand. “Is that for me?” The children go back to crowding around him, kneeling at his bedside. They know what is coming more than he does, she discovers. Perhaps it is best to let him stay in oblivion.

“I think you know what I mean,” she replies darkly, not daring to meet her husband’s eyes as she places the flower into his hands. “And of course it’s for you! It’s a beautiful flower, growing strong despite the heat. Never have I seen a blossom that reminded me more of you.” There are tears in her eyes, aren’t there? It is best to ignore them. 

He is weary. His eyes have closed, but she knows he is still breathing. She moves the lily onto his robes so that he doesn’t crush it in his hand. These harsh hands never get old, she thinks. The children have begun to cry, but she stays strong for them. She stays strong for them as she takes him in her arms. She stays strong for them when he whispers “Vi amo” in a trembling voice. She stays strong for them when his ragged breathing finally ends, and his eyes have closed for the final time. They are wailing, but she is not. Her sadness is numb, hidden away in some deep place. She will not allow herself to feel it.

“Is he gone?” one of her children asks her, and she does not turn around to see who it is. The grave. She must find someone to dig the grave, any old person passing on the paths nearby. They are much stronger than she is. 

“Yes,” she whispers, finally putting him down. She can never let him go.

~

She is on the road again. She does not know how she got here; she only knows that she is here now. She is standing at the edge of a path, waving at a farmer to come by her. Reluctantly, dragging a shovel, he approaches her. Tears cloud her vision as she points in the direction of the house. Dead. Her husband is dead. The laughter, the smiling, the joy that brought life into the blaze of June. He is gone, and Florence is nought more than an empty shell without him.

The man enters the house. He is an unfamiliar presence, and the children scurry away, heading back up the stairs to avoid encountering the man. Her voice trembles as she tells him what happened. The man has heard the name of her husband - who hasn’t by this point? He is famous, infamous, notorious, a criminal. Bury him with the lily, she says, bury him with the lily, she keeps repeating. When they travel down the long hallway and finally reach the room where he had spent his last days, his body lies there, quickly paling. There is no blossom that once lay on top of him, and he reckons that she has lost her mind. She is a wife in grieving, he figures; this must be normal.

“I… I don’t understand. Where is it? It was just here a moment ago!” she shouts at no one in particular. She kneels on the floor, searching through his robes, but she can find nothing. The farmer grows tired of her antics, and he unceremoniously tries to wrap the body in a blanket. No, no, she tells him, the air of June will cause him to rot, so he gives up on that endeavour all together and heads back outside to dig the grave. 

“Where do you want this thing?” he asks her. From the upstairs window, the children are watching.  
“To the north, facing the north. Facing the city. He always loved his city,” she responds, her lip quivering. He does not question her. He sticks his shovel into the dry ground and begins to dig. Surely, he is digging a hole for the plants. For the gardens. For the lilies to bloom. But the patch in the ground deepens and widens, and no humble lily may be placed there. The lily of his life. That was always what he called her, wasn’t it?

She is next to his body, holding him close in case he were to absorb her warmth and bring himself back to life, but it is not possible. She cannot stop herself, and she cries for him, for all the years spent together and all the years spent apart, from their time in Florence to their bitter reign of exile, for Florence, for exile. She is a flower amongst the gloom. There will be no more sunrises left for her to see.

“Madonna?” She looks up at the farmer, her eyes wet with tears. “Madonna, I need to, uh… bury him, you know.” He hates having to deliver the news, but she refuses to be the wife who curls up on top of her husband’s body and wails there for an aeon. She backs up, allowing the farmer to crudely pick it up and fling it over his shoulder. Her hands ball into fists, but it is not as if she can lift him herself. 

“See that he is buried well. Nothing too grandiose. Leave a patch of dirt there so that I may come by and plant a flower there, in hopes that it will grow.” She is still fixated on her lily, her lily that is gone from her, gone from this world. She follows him out to the yard, but she turns her back when her dear husband is placed into the ground and covered up. He taps her solemnly when it is done, and she thanks him profusely for his services, watching as he leaves the property and travels down the road alone. 

When she is alone again, she turns to face the grave. There is no lily that she can lay there on the humble patch of dirt, and she resorts to gathering a bouquet of miscellaneous flowers to set beneath the headstone. She finally lets go, lying down next to it and sobbing. She sobs because it has been hardly an hour since he has been gone from her, but she will never be able to see him again. The children know better than to disturb their distressed mother, who has curled up next to his grave. Her thrashing eventually stops, and she grows still, peacefully falling asleep on the ground next to him with an outstretched arm, holding an invisible hand. She will never let him go. She can never let him go. He is in her heart until her time has come.

She has washed the grave with her silvery tears, and in the silent shade, a bitter lily sprouts from the ground, its petals turned towards the sun that would never again shine over Firenze.


End file.
